- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
Cut It Out: The C-Section Epidemic in America
Ch 2: The Tyranny of the Rules
- “[Pregnant women’s] choices are determined by protocols, or rules for care of patients, put in place by hospital administrators, voted on by nurses and physician, but based on organizational recommendations, typically ACOG and risk management departments” (55)
- This was to decrease malpractice suits and most suits were healthcare providers veering from the “pathway”. Hospitals put liability pretty high up on the priority list
I stopped reading this chapter because it doesn’t seem super helpful for my topic (as is most of the book but I’m hoping chapter 5 will better). It seems to be more focused on hospital workers and their decisions that push women to c-sections for their own self-interests, instead of women’s choices for their babies.
Ch 5: Women’s Lack of Choice in Labor and Birth
- “Choice is consistent with the American focus on neoliberal individualism, yet scholars of reproduction have pulled apart this rhetoric of choice to suggest that choice is not always available to women, and that when it is available, it may not be available to all women” (135)
- When states outlaw abortions, wealthier women can cross state lines to get them, but low-income women don’t have that luxury.
- Example given is SD to MN
- Louisiana and Texas require providers to “both show and describe an ultrasound image to the women” before an abortion and women can’t refuse it.
- Not every woman can partake in IVF because it isn’t covered by health insurance
- When states outlaw abortions, wealthier women can cross state lines to get them, but low-income women don’t have that luxury.
- Women are told to have a c-section because… (136)
- CTG tracings, but they’re wrong 99.8% of the time
- Their babies are “too big” but there’s no way to accurately measure or predict fetal weight
- They’ve been pushing “too long”, even though there’s still a possibility for a successful vaginal birth
- It’s hard to find providers and hospitals that will attempt a VBAC (vaginal twin birth or vaginal breech birth)
- “In short, women are not given the choice about how their babies will be born”
- It’s almost as if providers push for c-sections because it’s more efficient (neoliberalism)
- Women are denied VBAC opportunities, jacking the percentage to 91% of women having repeat c-sections
- ICAN: “30% of U.S. hospitals formally ban VBAN and that others have “de facto” bans (137)
- LT-MII Survey: “45% of women giving birth after a previous c-section were interested in VBAC but more than half of them (57%) were denied the opportunity”
- Women’s choices limited by the information presented to them
- “When patients believed their doctors preferred them to deliver by repeat c-section, they chose this option 86% of the time” (137)
- In her interviews, maternity providers say that c-sections are “safe” and prevent bad outcomes in birth. However, there’s empirical evidence that there are higher rates of maternal and fetal morbidity for c-sections (140)
- Most of the doctors she interviewed said c-sections were safer for babies but there’s no evidence to prove that (141-142)
As I thought, this book wasn’t very useful for my current topic but would’ve been for my previous topic, which is fine since it was recommended to me based on my previous topic.
And the Poor Get Children
Chapter 1: Intro
- “It cannot be denied that contraceptive measures become a necessity in married life at some time or other, and theoretically it would be one of the greatest triumphs of mankind, one of the most tangible liberations from the bondage of nature to which we are subject, were it possible to raise the responsible act of procreation to the level of a voluntary and intentional act, and to free it from its entanglement with an indispensable satisfaction of a natural desire – Sigmund Freud, 1898” (1)
- Falling death rate and rapidly increasing population could prevent future generations from taking advantage of medical and technological advances. He terms this the “population bomb”
- Over half the population of this country is working class
- Blue-collar jobs or lower-level service jobs
- Live in not very desirable neighborhoods with modest houses
- Most education is high school, and some drop out
- Divide working class into upper-lowerandlower-lowerclasses
- UL
- Largest portion
- “greater prosperity and stability” (4)
- Semi-skilled to medium-skilled jobs
- Police, firefighter, bus drivers
- Comfortable homes in neighborhoods with other UL class members
- LL
- ¼ of working class, 15% of total US pop (4)
- Unskilled jobs; “work only intermittently or are chronically unemployed” (5)
- Few graduate high school “and a great many go no further than grammar school” (5)
- Live in slums and decrepit homes
- Some earn fairly good money but “the seasonal or intermittent nature of their jobs and their relatively impulsive spending habits often prevent them from maintaining what most Americans regard as a decent standard of living “ (5)
- UL limit their family to a desirable size with contraception; LL feel burdened by having more children than they originally wanted
- “As Margaret Mead notes (1949) … “there lies a subtler factor, a willingness or an unwillingness to breed that is deeply imbedded in the character structure of both men and women.” Implying that lower class people naturally cannot control themselves when it comes to limiting family size.
- UL
- Abortion not discussed in this book as an option for family planning/ limiting family size
Chapter 2: “Doing Nothing is the Easiest Way Out”
- Nelson, even though he and his wife have 5 kids after 5 years of marriage, refuses to use condoms. Mrs. Nelson refuses to get birth control, only visiting the hospital only a month before she’s due. She’s always worrying about getting pregnant. They use “safe period” method or an ovulation chart. Mr. Nelson thinks it’s his wife’s sole responsibility to prevent pregnancy.
Chapter 3: Patterns of Family Planning Behavior
- In the 1930s, middle-class, urban families consisting of 2, 3 or 4 children became the rule
- 1940s, Americans wanted bigger families with the range being 2-4 kids
- Ideal goes cross urban-rural lines and socioeconomic class
- Study from Freedman, Whelpton, Campbell (1959)
- The lower the status, the more children respondents have and the more they expect (25)
- Women with less education are likely to adopt contraception after multiple pregnancies (26)
- 68% of college women use contraception before 1stpregnancy compared to 24% of grammar school women
- 90% of college women before 2ndpregnancy, 29% of grammar school women
- Before 3rd, 2/3 of women with education while only slightly more than half of grammar school women
- Early planners (29)
- Not common among working class people
- Know how many kids they want, space them accordingly to make sure their finances can support their family; want to make sure their kids have what any average American kid would
- More common that they begin planning before they reach their desired number of kids
- The “do-nothing group” (32)
- Self-explanatory; make no effort to limit their family size, even after multiple years of marriage and multiple children
- Similarly small group to early planners; polar opposites of each other
- Respondent who have done nothings are majority catholic and consider having a large family a positive value (which we would think is ridiculous and irresponsible and demand a separation of church and rationality)
- Mostly men who truly do nothing, the women in this group try minor things such as douching and the rhythm method
- Lack of failure due to failure in execution, not lack of desire (which many would call lazy and/or irresponsible)
- More typical, there’s just no sense of urgency to prevent pregnancy in this group
- The sporadic or careless users (36)
- Again, kind of self-explanatory: the people in this group have tried several contraceptive methods but not in a consistent or satisfactory way
- Parents wasn’t to limit family size but don’t actively pursue that goal. Instead they switch methods but continue being inconsistent, hoping for different results
- Blame methods instead of themselves
- Desperation leads women to believe that sterilization is the only way out, but men aren’t as desperate
- Again, men take no steps in family planning, expect their wife to do it, but do things like pretend to use a condom (which is so messed up), all while the women feel like they cannot communicate freely with their husbands about this
- Late, “Desperate” Limiters
- Begin consistent use of contraceptives after they have their desired family size
- Same determination as early planners
Chapter 4: Assumptions and Orientations in Family Planning
- Reasons for limiting family size (45)
- “you shouldn’t have more than you can support”
- Concerned about the bare necessities (Mostly lower-lower class)
- Effectively saying they’re limiting their children because they haveto or the repercussions will be grave
- “Relationship between # of children and ability to secure things for the family” (46)
- Not how many mouths they can feed but how well; quality over quantity
- Clothing, education, entertainment
- “symbol of one’s ability to maintain a respectable and socially desirable environment for children and give them various advantages” (46)
- Wish to give their kids a better life than they had
- More felt by fathers but mothers appreciate their aspirations
- “describes particular way of life with particular standards that require a certain income to maintain” (47)
- Strong goals help a couple give serious attention to family planning but thinking like this means you need to be secure in your future
- Not how many mouths they can feed but how well; quality over quantity
- “the mother’s health shouldn’t be endangered” (48)
- Wives convince husbands that having too many kids and too close together could kill them and they believe it (lol)
- “you shouldn’t have them if you don’t want them” (49) (oh how appropriate given the current political climate)
- A wanted child is more likely to be a healthy child
- Extra children are burdens not pleasure to mothers
- Concerned about the bare necessities (Mostly lower-lower class)
- “you shouldn’t have more than you can support”
The other chapters seem to be redundant or not very helpful for my project. A lot of this seems to be not super relevant but I know I can spin in.